How do we design our PE programs?

Originally published 23/05/2014

Updated 09/02/2021

In 2014 I had the pleasure of delivering the opening keynotes to the South Australian HPE Conference and then the Central Queensland HPE Conference. Both conference organising committees asked me to be provocative and challenging as well as providing suggestions to move the practice of school PE forward. While thinking about this challenge I was reminded of something former ACHPER Australia NED Jeff Emmel wrote about PE in the 1979 ACHPER International Conference Proceedings; 'The questions we must not be afraid to ask ourselves are, 'Is our influence any more noteworthy now than say 10 years ago? Is our service improving?'

In 1981 Howard Mutton, the then PE Curriculum and Policy Officer in South Australia, concluded to The Committee of Enquiry into Physical Education and Sport in South Australian Schools that "vague notions of playing games and sports are no longer adequate attitudes towards PE". Forty years on, has school PE, especially in primary schools without specialist PE teachers, progressed beyond "vague notions of playing games and sport"? One might argue that globally, curriculum documents have articulated a more educational basis for physical education than previous conceptions of physical training, and that since the 1990's shift from curricula ground in a "teacher objectives" approach to articulation of student learning outcomes in the 1990's, or more recently student achievement standards and competence (standards based curriculum), that physical education as education in, through and about movement (Arnold, 1979) should be more obvious to teachers. Curriculum documents now promote learning in PE as rich, meaningful and holistic experiences grounded in cognitive complexities developing through a coherently progressive framework from Foundation (also called Reception or Kindergarten) to Year/Grade 10. However, it is PE teachers that design and enact teaching and determine the student classroom experience and the learning that occurs. As John Hattie suggests, it is what teachers know, do and care about which is powerful in the learning equation. Where there is a challenge to improve the form (program design) and expression (pedagogy) of PE is not a problem of developing new curriculum documents, it is the challenge to change teacher thinking about PE. Ken Green (2000) found in his research in the UK, it is the everyday philosophy of the teacher that determines what is taught, how it is taught, and how it is assessed. Steve Stolz and I (2014) called this teacher interpretative pragmatics.

Where there is persistence of what Metzler (2011) called "the physical education method" and Alexander, Taggart and Medland (1994) described as an activity perspective rather than an teaching perspective history would suggest that new curriculum documents are of themselves not sufficient to bring about change in PE teacher practice. Emphasising this point, Brooker & Clennett (2006) suggested that new curricula frequently "limps along in the shadow of old knowledge and past practice", the new curricula marginalised in the curriculum making process.

I believe the challenge to improve is the challenge for PE teachers to be pedagogical and content experts. I suggested this as expert teachers are more likely to challenge students to master than to perform, to engage rather than participate, and to set challenging goals rather than encouraging students to "have a go" or "do your best". PE teachers must be able to clearly define their program outcomes and how the program outcomes are measured, and PE teachers must be willing to be held accountable for student learning as all teachers are. This will require a shift from the "thinness" of many "typical" secondary PE programs designed for breadth of experience through multi-activity programs providing little more in program outcomes than coverage of a long list of activities, with ambitions for students to have fun and find something they enjoy. There is no evidence that this "typical" multi-activity program impacts physical activity participation or health outcomes for the majority of students (Green, 2014).

The pedagogy of performance conformity and uniformity of adherence to replication of pre-determined movement techniques may just provide students with the understanding of what they can't do rather than what is possible (O'Connor, 2006). This is because students never spend enough time on anything to achieve competence, let alone mastery. The multi-activity curriculum program may serve little more than (pre-existing) ability identification.

The PE learning environment should set high expectations for student learning and PE teachers should teach for understanding and skill development. Competence begets confidence and the choices to be active. Skill development takes time and requires quality instruction. Volume and quality of "practice" are central determinants in achieving mastery of game and movement skills. Lets do the maths. The NSW FMS literature suggested it takes up to 600 minutes to achieve competency of one FMS. Competency usually being 3 out of 5 trials of an FMS are successful; so competency is 60% effectiveness. Mastery is therefore much higher. So in 9-10 hours of distributed practice typical of a 5 week unit of work a novice/beginner might learn to competency one FMS skill in a closed (stable and predictable) performance context. You have to ask the question, how much longer must it take to achieve mastery of the more complex and complicated to perform sport specific skills of any one sport? How many sports could a novice "learn" to tactical and technical competency in a semester? During the 6 years of primary school? During the 5 years of secondary school? Especially if there is no curricular coherence from one unit of work to the next.

The challenge seems to be that less is more when it comes to aiming for learning anything substantially or with any "depth" in PE. Covering less but in more detail, linking themes and concepts and principles of play across units of work horizontally through the year and vertically through the year levels so students are challenged towards ever increasing levels of performance achievement and understanding would seem to be more educationally defensible than the persistent multi-activity program model.

One curriculum model consistent with this direction is the Sport Education model. It has been shown to offer the development of social skill learning in addition to movement skill learning. It has been shown to be preferred by girls, lower-skilled students and students that are "non-participators" in typical PE. Research suggests high levels of student engagement, and the "pedagogical toolkit" of Sport Education has been successfully applied to outdoor and adventure activities, gymnastics, swimming and athletics. The Sport Education curriculum model incorporates TGfU-Game Sense pedagogy to achieve game competency objectives, and co-operative learning pedagogies in the interdependent small-group or team affiliation aspect of the model. However, research suggests the Sport Education model is not one used by a majority of PE teachers.

"Are we improving?" is not a question about the curriculum document, but a question about the design and enactment of physical EDUCATION and therefore, a question about the efficacy of PE teachers.